ARTSCAPE:THE COMEDIAN Dave Gorman made a tidy sum from his Googlewhack Adventureshow and book, writes Michael Dervan.

A Googlewhack, in case you don’t know, is a two-word Google search that produces just a single result. The rules for finding Googlewhacks preclude the use of quotation marks. But quotation marks are part of the essential armoury of teachers and lecturers when they want to trace uncredited sources in their students’ work. And they’re also useful for anyone trying to trace sources for unsigned programme notes at classical concerts.

Take this year’s Kilkenny Arts Festival. The notes refer to Sibelius’s String Trio in G minor, from which “only the first movement Lento survives intact”, and which “combined the forms of the lied (song), sonata and continuous variation”. A search for either of these phrases leads to just one result, the inkpot.com site, in Singapore, where the writer – the Inkpot Sibelius Nutcase – has the courtesy to acknowledge information gleaned from sleeve notes of the Ondine CD he or she is reviewing.

The description of Jean Cras’s string trio as having “perfectly balanced sonority and a plenitude of expression” leads straight to Wikipedia and just one other site, astrotheme.com, which credits Wikipedia but where the main concern is to delve into Cras’s astrology and birth chart. Did you know he shares his birthday with Naomi Campbell, Charles Aznavour, Katie Price, Richard Wagner and Arthur Conan Doyle, among others?

Googling “The three trios of op. 9 came near the end of Beethoven’s first period” leads uniquely to classicalarchives.com; “Robert de Visée was better known as a performer than as a composer” leads there, too, and to just one other page, on HMV’s Japanese site.

Similarly, "Despite the rapid composition (for Beethoven) of his Choral Fantasy" produces just two hits, and " William Tellis generally regarded as being Rossini's greatest opera" leads to choirs.org.uk, where the author, John Bawden, makes a vain request, in bright red text, "to those using these notes". "You are more than welcome," he writes, "to use all or part of these notes for your choral society or church programme, or for educational purposes. If you do, please would you be kind enough to . . . acknowledge my authorship."

How did Kilkenny Arts Festival slip up? It says some of the credits intended for publication with the programme notes were inadvertently omitted from the versions actually printed.